Applicant Information
Thank you for applying to the University of Cambridge, and to Gonville & Caius College
This page refers to applications made in October 2024. It provides some instructions for what you need to do now, and what will happen next with your application. Please read all of the information carefully, and contact the Admissions Office (admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk) if you have any questions.
You've submitted your UCAS application - what do you need to do now?
1. Make sure you have completed and submitted the My Cambridge Application. You should have received an automated email about this after completing your UCAS application. The deadline for its submission is 22 October.
2. You will have received a link in your acknowledgement email to complete the Gonville & Caius Application Form which is compulsory for all applicants, and allows you to submit written work (if applicable for your chosen course – see below), interview preferences, and interview adjustments (if applicable). It also asks you to agree to our feedback policy. All applicants are required to fill out this form by 4 November. The link to the Gonville & Caius Application Form is included in your application acknowledgement email which was sent from admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk. Please don't forget to fill out this form and the My Cambridge Application: both are compulsory, and failure to complete them by the deadline will result in the discontinuation of your application.
3. If you think that there may be some ambiguity regarding your Tuition Fee Status, please write to us at admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk.
4. Relax! And wait to find out if you have been invited to interview. We aim to give applicants as much notice as possible and will be sending out invitations by email during November. For subjects without pre-registration required assessments, we will aim to communicate whether or not you have been invited to interview in the week beginning 11 November. For subjects with pre-registration required assessments, we will aim for the week beginning 18 November. The interviews will take place during the period of 9 to 20 December 2024, however there may be some overflow on 5 and 6 December. Please keep this period free. Further information about interviews is given below.
5. If you were invited to interview, you will receive a decision about your application electronically on 30 January 2025. Please see below for more information.
Submitted Work Guidelines
Applicants for the subjects listed below are required to submit one or two pieces of written work.
If you are applying for Architecture or Design: the only piece of work that you need to submit is the six-page portfolio detailed in the subject webpage. It must be preceded by a coversheet which can be found here.
If you are applying for ASNC, Archaeology, Classics, Education, English, History, History & Modern Languages, History & Politics, HSPS, MML, Music, or Theology: you will be required to submit written work which has been prepared and marked as part of your normal course of study. Each piece of written work must be preceded by a coversheet which can be found here.
Being part of your "normal course of study" means that work should be written as part of your school courses, not for extra- or super-curricular activities, programmes, or competitions. Your work must be in English (unless requested otherwise for foreign language study), not re-written or corrected for Cambridge, and should ideally have your teacher’s original markings on it. However, we recognise that in some instances, you might not yet have received feedback on the work you consider to be your best, in which case unmarked work is acceptable. If your work is unmarked, please have a teacher sign or stamp the coversheet so we can ensure you are submitting your own original work that is not corrected for Cambridge.
Please do not send long projects or research papers; essays should not be more than 2000 words in length. If you wish to send an extract of a longer piece, this is acceptable. Clearly mark on the coversheet that it is an extract.
Please check the webpage for your subject for full details of the written work we require.
Please submit your written work as part of the Gonville & Caius Application Form (detailed above and linked in your application acknowledgement email). Please note that your work must be in PDF form. The deadline for submission of this form is 11:59pm UK time on 4 November.
We request written work so that we can get a sense of the kind of work you are doing at present, and we take some account of the essays when we make decisions about admissions. Sometimes we might discuss the essays in an interview, but more usually we would aim to ask questions about other or related areas of study.
Disabilities and Extenuating Circumstances
This form (linked) allows for you to disclose a disability/neurodiverse condition/long-term illness. It also allows you to tell us about any adjustments/allowances you may need at any interview you may be invited to. You must provide us with the completed form, along with specified supporting documentation from an official source, through the Gonville & Caius Application Form. The deadline for submission of this form is 4 November.
If you have experienced any particular disadvantage during your studies, such as serious ill health or a family bereavement, an Extenuating Circumstances Form (ECF) can be completed by a teacher/doctor/care worker to provide further details, in confidence. The deadline for this is 22 October.
If you wish to discuss any matters relating to disabilities, you can contact the Admissions Office or the Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre.
Interview Information
Caius is running a hybrid interview model this year. We are completely confident in both modes of assessment, and neither hold any inherent advantage or disadvantage.
Interviews will take place during the period of 9 to 20 December 2024, however there may be some overflow on 5 and 6 December. The number of interviews that you have will vary by subject. Most applicants will have two interviews; some will have one longer, single interview. Applicants for some subjects will need to sit a short test or do some preparatory reading.
All further information you need will be included in the invitation email. If you have any questions about your interviews after you have received that email, please do get in touch. You will be asked to confirm your attendance at interview via a simple web form; please make sure that you do this by the deadline stated in the invitation email. You will receive the link to the confirmation form in your detailed invitation email with the date(s) and time(s).
Online interviews
You can find our guidance for online interviews here. Please download it and read it carefully.
We invite applicants to take their interviews in the location that is most comfortable for them, be that at home or in school. Interviews will take place via Whereby in almost all instances; if you have applied for Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Engineering, or Physical Natural Sciences, your interviews will take place via Zoom.
In-person interviews
In-person interviews will take place in Gonville & Caius College in almost all instances. For information about travel, please click here.
Your invitation to interview will contain further details about who is eligible for accommodation and/or travel reimbursement, and how to claim these.
College Registered Assessments
Applicants for some subjects are required to sit a College registered assessment. You will be notified if you need to sit a College registered assessment in your interview invitation email and we will register you for this.
The timetable for College registered assessments for Gonville & Caius is available here.
Admissions assessment subject information sheets:
History & Modern Languages (ab initio)
History & Modern Languages (post A-level)
Modern & Medieval Languages (post A-level)
If your assessment is hosted via our online assessment platform Moodle (Archaeology, Architecture, Design, English, Linguistics) then please see here for instructions on how to upload your completed response at the end of your assessment: Uploading Completed Assessments to Moodle
FAQs for the admissions assessments can be found here: Assessment FAQs
Contact Information
We will communicate with you almost exclusively by email. Please make sure that you check your emails regularly. You may wish to add the Admissions email address (admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk) to your contacts or safe senders list and check your spam or junk folders often. We advise against using an email address provided by your school or college, but if this is the case, make sure that you can still check this easily outside of school hours and in the holidays. If you change your email address, make sure to inform us and update this with UCAS.
Decisions
Once we have considered all of the information available to us, we will decide whether or not to make you an offer. If you have already obtained your qualifications, this could be an academically unconditional offer (although there will still be some practical conditions). If you have not yet completed your qualifications, your offer will be conditional upon your attaining a particular set of results in your examinations.
Admissions decisions are communicated to applicants electronically on 30 January 2025. An overview of this process is given on the University website, including details of the Winter Pool.